3.5. Incorrect use of apostrophes Apostrophes are perhaps the most misused punctuation mark of all. Described as ‘errant tadpoles’ (Cutts, 1995: 89), they can, if used incorrectly, completely obscure the intended meaning of a sentence. Student example: ‘The law does not specify other eventualities, such as a situation where a lost item falls onto a landowners land…’ In this sentence, ‘landowners’ should be ‘landowner’s’, because the land belongs to the landowner. Apostrophes indicate ownership: ‘the landowner’s land’ is another way of saying ‘the land of the landowner’. Correct use of the apostrophe shows clarity of thought and a good understanding of the relationship between the nouns in a sentence. Learn about apostrophes: they will help you to think more clearly and help your reader to understand and follow your argument better (see Further Reading). Remember the rule that the apostrophe generally goes before the ‘s’ if the noun is singular (e.g. the dog’s dinner meaning the dinner of the dog) and after the ‘s’ if the noun is plural (dogs’ dinner meaning the dinner of the dogs). As well as indicating ownership, the other common use of apostrophes is to show that a letter is missing – that words havebeen ‘contracted’ – i.e. ‘It’s nothing to do with me’ instead of ‘It is nothing to do with me’; ‘She’s been a long time’ instead of ‘She has been a long time.’ As a general rule, contractions should be avoided in academic work. 3.6. Incorrect use of speech marks Speech marks ‘do exactly what they say on the tin’: they mark speech. Nonetheless, they are still one of the most misused punctuation marks. Student example: ‘In ‘The End of Education’, Nils (2004) states that “the only thing that can save the UK education system is a complete overhaul…”.’ In this sentence, the author has used speech marks (“_”) instead of inverted commas (‘_’). In most disciplines speech marks should only be used when something is being said, not when something has been expressed in writing. The majority of quotations in academic work will therefore require inverted commas, not speech marks, though you should check the conventions of your discipline to confirm this. The difference between speech marks (sometimes called ‘double inverted commas’) and inverted commas (‘single inverted commas’) is very simple. One way to distinguish them is to remember that speech requires the physical presence of two people, a speaker and a listener, hence it needs double inverted commas: “speech marks”. When something is being referenced from a book, however, only one person is present (the reader) hence ‘single inverted commas’.‘Most experienced writers rewrite their work over and over, refining their thoughts, finding a better way of saying something, making a long-winded section a bit briefer, or adding more detail to develop an idea.’ (Cottrell 2003: 146)
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 11:26:56 +0000
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